


Comfort Me With Apples

by ComplicatedLight



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Apples, High Harvest - Freeform, M/M, The Orchards of Kent, Victorian pauper ghosts, a lot of apples
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-08-25 12:22:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16661096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ComplicatedLight/pseuds/ComplicatedLight
Summary: I've only ever written in one fandom - the Lewis fandom - so writing and posting in another feels like a huge deal for me! Over the last year I've fallen in love with the Rivers of London books, and have started to work my way through some of the fantastic RoL stories on AO3. It's been a complete joy getting to explore these characters through writing them.This fic has seven chapters in total, all completed except for a final bit of editing and fiddling. I'll be posting one or two chapters a week.It's set fairly early on in the series - after the events of Covent Garden but not that much after - maybe around the time of Moon Over Soho, but in an adjacent, not quite the same universe where things develop a little differently.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've only ever written in one fandom - the Lewis fandom - so writing and posting in another feels like a huge deal for me! Over the last year I've fallen in love with the Rivers of London books, and have started to work my way through some of the fantastic RoL stories on AO3. It's been a complete joy getting to explore these characters through writing them.
> 
> This fic has seven chapters in total, all completed except for a final bit of editing and fiddling. I'll be posting one or two chapters a week.
> 
> It's set fairly early on in the series - after the events of Covent Garden but not that much after - maybe around the time of Moon Over Soho, but in an adjacent, not quite the same universe where things develop a little differently.

Funny what makes some people start to question their sexuality. A woman can know she’s straight in the same way she knows she’s Scottish or short—she doesn’t have to think about it, she just _is_ . . . until one day at the age of thirty-one she sees a film starring Penelope Cruz and she starts feeling a bit odd, a bit . . . unsettled. Three years later she’s got a wife and two retired greyhounds. That actually happened to the sister of a mate of mine at Hendon, by the way. They’re a lovely couple; I met them at a party, once—the lesbians, that is, not the greyhounds.

For me, it was watching Nightingale walk out of an exploding, disused paint factory in Hackney Wick two months ago. In the weeks running up to the incident at the factory, three people had been found dead, at a rate of roughly one per week, all in the Belgravia Murder Investigation Team’s patch. All three had been poisoned by apparently being forced to drink large quantities of very nasty, very old paint, full of lead and arsenic and other chemicals you really wouldn’t want to coat your house walls with, let alone ingest. Not a nice way to go. The Folly hadn’t been involved because there’d been no indication of _weird bollocks_ , to use DCI Seawoll’s charming term for the focus of mine and Nightingale’s policing endeavours. The Belgravia team were looking for a serial poisoner, modus operandi weird but not _weird_ , motive unknown. 

We at the Folly remained blissfully unaware of all this until a call came in with a report of disturbing sounds and _really strange, scary feelings_ at the site of a derelict Victorian paint factory just off Wick Bridge Lane in Hackney Wick. Through proper procedure being followed vis-à-vis the entering of information into HOLMES 2 and the cross checking of key terms, a link had been made between possible _weird bollocks_ at a Victorian paint factory, and multiple deaths by Victorian paint. And let’s be honest, one sure way of knowing that you need to involve your two Falcon capable colleagues is when a pair of experienced, uniformed coppers call for back up because of _really strange, scary feeling_ s. 

So, off we went, heading east in the Jag, to the old Empire Paint Company site, a vast redbrick cathedral to Victorian industry, now a thoroughly vandalised though still standing empty shell. We parked just outside the site gates next to the police van and cars littering the side of the road. We were met by DS Miriam Stephanopoulos, a couple of the constables based with the Murder Team including Sahra Guleed, and enough uniformed officers to suggest that the van must have been fairly cosy on the drive over from Belgravia. Stephanopoulos was looking as irritable and unimpressed as you might expect, if you took into consideration her unwavering suspicion of the Folly, the three unsolved murders on her patch, and the fact that her everyday demeanour gives the strong impression she’s unlikely to be impressed by any sort of feelings, particularly not weird and scary ones. 

Once the niceties were over, and I use the term in its loosest and least accurate sense, she filled us in on the situation. Since she’d arrived almost fifteen minutes earlier, there’d been absolutely no signs of anything out of the ordinary. She’d interrogated, I mean, had been briefed by, the poor constables who’d phoned it in, and had clearly not been won over by their account. She didn’t quite go as far as saying they were a pair of timewasting idiots with overactive imaginations, but the implication was there.

We were just putting together a sensible strategy for inspecting the site when the ground beneath our feet and the air around us literally started humming, in a really freaky way. Stephanopoulos swore at some length under her breath and Nightingale frowned, and, being the master of understatement he is, quietly said _Ah, right._ The humming stopped again, but funnily enough, that wasn’t particularly reassuring. It was agreed that the first priority was to make sure there were no members of the public nearby in case the situation deteriorated, and to secure the perimeter. Stephanopoulos gave her officers some brief instructions and they made a start, but, after another short burst of the humming thing, she called for additional back-up from the local nick, and for a fire crew to attend the scene. Nightingale also made a call but he stepped away and I couldn’t tell who he was talking to. I wanted to do a bit of internet research on my phone about the history of the factory but I’d switched it off as soon as the first burst of humming started, just in case whatever it was that was causing the humming was so powerful it could fry tech at this kind of distance, which, by the way, was a truly terrifying thought. By the time the local police and the fire and rescue service arrived, all was quiet again but I decided not to risk it.

The site secured, Nightingale announced to me and Stephanopoulos that his plan was to go into the factory, alone. Stephanopoulos shot him a look. So did I, come to that, but she got hers in first. Nightingale grimaced at her and nodded, acknowledging her about-to-be-voiced objections.

“I know, but I assure you, Miriam, this is not heroics. It’s simply a case of it being easier for me to deal with whatever is in there, which in all likelihood has significant magical power, if I don’t also have to attend to the safety of fellow officers.”

Fair enough, I supposed, but it did beg the question—who was going to attend to Nightingale’s safety? Stephanopoulos clearly didn’t like the plan any more than I did, but like me, she couldn’t come up with a viable alternative that didn’t put more officers at risk from something they wouldn’t be able to subdue anyway. 

I did try; I suggested that I should go in with him; that even with my limited magical abilities, surely I could be of some help. Nightingale looked at me for a moment and then shook his head. “Not this time, Peter.” His voice was quiet but had a steeliness to it that made it clear the matter wasn’t up for debate. 

So in the end he strode off alone towards the factory entrance with his cane in his right hand, leaving the rest of us to wait, tensely, at the perimeter edge. We waited and we waited. I know it was probably only ten minutes, maybe not even that, but it felt unending, like a really shit version of the kind of slowing down of time that happens when you’re a kid and you’re waiting for your birthday or Christmas to come. Of course, whatever you’re waiting for does eventually come, and in this case it came in the form of a terrifying rumble that I felt snaking and throbbing through the tarmac under my thick soled Doc Martens. It felt a bit like the way alternating current feels as it throbs up your arm when you’re getting an electric shock—intensely physical and so scary it makes every cell in your body shout this is not ok. 

And then, as we watched, the walls of the factory seemed to ripple and shiver but somehow they stayed upright. Then it all went quiet again and I remember in that moment, I thought, like the naïvely optimistic idiot I can be sometimes— _well, that’s not so bad_. And I actually started to feel a bit calmer—right up to the point when the whole back half of the factory roof blew off. Just straight up blew off and almost seemed to hover in the air for a second or two. But any student of Newton's law of universal gravitation (the other bee in Newton’s bonnet) could have predicted what happened next: hundreds and hundreds of square metres of Victorian slate roof and supporting beams collapsed back down and it started raining tiles and bricks and tree-sized iron beams onto the factory. Miraculously, or magically, more likely, the rest of the building remained upright, but the roof, now shattered into thousands of lethal weapons, crashed back into the factory. And it did it in a weird, partially contained kind of way; almost all of it falling back within the factory walls, as if someone was trying to limit the radius of destruction, though they weren’t completely successful. 

“Shit.” That was Stephanopoulos. We were just out of range of the flying debris, but the noise and dust were horrific. “Shit.” 

All I could think about was Nightingale. Was it him who’d blown the roof up or had whatever he’d encountered in there done it? And if it was him, if that had been the best or only option for him to deal with what was in there, then what the fuck was in there? And whether it was him or not who’d blown up the roof, I was absolutely sure it was him who’d kept the rest of the factory on its feet and who’d contained the fallout; I was certain it was Nightingale who’d made sure all the surrounding buildings and people, people like me and Stephanopoulos and all the police and the fire crews including Frank Caffery and his mates who’d also turned up while we’d been waiting, remained as safe as it was possible to be when you’re too close to a magically powered factory explosion.  

But even Nightingale has his limits. He can be shot—as I found out too fucking well, back in the first few months. He’s not immortal; well, yes, in some ways it’s possible he might be, but he’s not immortal in the sense that he can’t be killed, because he can, he really fucking can. And thousands of tonnes of debris collapsing onto him would, without doubt, do that. 

I felt wounded, viscerally wounded, as if one of those iron roof beams had hurtled towards me and smashed through my chest. I felt utterly, irreversibly defeated, because I knew that everything was over; I felt like nothing would ever be good in the world again. I screwed my eyes shut because I was close to crying and that was not going to happen. Well, not until I had some privacy. 

“Holy. Shit.” Stephanopoulos again. I opened my eyes and tried to follow her gaze to whatever it was she was staring at. Through the clouds of brick dust and slate shards, back-lit by the fire that had now started up in the factory, I could just make out Nightingale walking towards us with that hint of military bearing about him; he seemed unhurried and apparently uninjured.

And he was looking, if not completely untroubled, then really not much worse than mildly put out. And most of his put-outness seemed to be focussed on the state of his suit. As he walked away from the flaming factory, a factory that was now firing out exploding paint cans like the most terrifying fireworks display you could ever imagine, he seemed oblivious to the epic scene of devastation playing out behind him and instead was focussed on brushing some brick dust off one of the lapels of his beautiful grey suit jacket. That done, he straightened his cuffs and then he stopped walking, looked up, and narrowed his eyes, scanning the crowd of police and fire officers. He just stood there, alone, the one still point in a storm of chaos and destruction. When he saw me, he stopped searching the crowd and there was no mistaking the look of relief on his face. He started to walk towards me, and as he walked, he gave me this tiny, self-deprecating smile, and my insides felt like wild horses were rearing up through my guts and chest, and I just thought— _well, fuck me._


	2. Chapter 2

Humans, in fact most animals come to that, use avoidance as one of their primary coping strategies, which makes complete sense: if something hurts or threatens you, run from it, if you can. It’s a basic survival strategy developed when we were regularly dealing with sabre-toothed tigers and humongous bears. Actually, if you think about it, it’s a strategy we developed long before we were human or anything resembling human. And because it works with tigers and bears, we try the same strategy with things inside our skin; things like thoughts and feelings and wants and urges: if a feeling scares you or a thought unsettles you every time you think it, if a thought feels threatening to how you see yourself, then mentally run the fuck away from it—do everything you can not to think about it. It’s a sensible strategy. 

The problem is, it doesn’t work. Well, it can work in the very short term, but most people can’t keep their mind off anything they’re desperate to keep their mind off for more than a few minutes before whatever it is intrudes again. And worse than that, their efforts to keep their mind off whatever it is actually make it more likely they’ll think about the thing than if they’d never tried to block it out in the first place, if that makes sense. It’s a recognised psychological phenomenon called something like the suppression rebound effect and there’s proper scientific research about it and everything. I came across it one night when my brain was too busy for sleep—I entered the internet at the psychology of crowd behaviour, and by following links and trains of thought and random ideas that occurred to me, I ended up spending a couple of hours in the middle of the night exploring the published experimental research on thought and emotion suppression. It’s fascinating stuff and I only stopped digging around in it because I kept hitting up against academic journal paywalls—not something that tends to be an issue with my usual Folly-related research, what with the lack of magic-focussed academic journals and the Folly’s huge collection of books. 

Knowing all this has not stopped me trying my best to avoid certain thoughts and feelings, though. Specifically, since that day at the Empire paint factory I’ve been having pretty unsettling thoughts and feelings about Nightingale; thoughts and feelings along the lines of _I keep thinking about your face when you smile . . . and every time I think about you smiling, I really feel like kissing you._ It’s clichéd but it absolutely is like a light bulb has gone on. I mean, I’ve always thought that Nightingale’s a good-looking bloke who dresses well, but I’ve never _felt_ anything until now.

So, I’ve been putting in an admirable amount of effort trying to keep all this at bay. For starters, I’ve cleaned the Asbo on several occasions, and I don’t mean driving it to a car wash, I mean actually carrying buckets of soapy water from the scullery at the back of the kitchen to the yard next to the coach house. Molly has taken to treating this as a spectator sport because the first time I did it, the bucket slipped out of my hands on one of the early trips between the scullery and the car and I ended up pouring the entire contents of it over my shoes. Luckily, it happened in the yard, not the kitchen, or she would have been less amused; and if there’s one thing I’ve learned since moving into the Folly, it’s that you don’t want to be the cause of Molly being less amused; she’s pretty scary even when she is amused. Anyway, the point is, there’s been a lot of car washing, _and_ dog walking, _and_ sorting out of filing cabinets that didn’t look like they’d been opened since the 1960s. I’ve even been doing extra Latin translation exercises, which I think tells you plenty about my sincere efforts to not have these particular thoughts and feelings. 

Of course, we were busy with the case for a while, too. I’d finally got to do that historic research and it didn’t make for happy reading. There’d been an appalling industrial accident at the factory back in the late 1870’s: forty-seven factory workers had died from a leak of poisonous fumes. At the time, human error—a mistake by the foreman, to be precise—had been blamed for the tragedy. The men were buried in the graveyard of the church right next to the factory, and many of the dead men’s families, no longer able to pay their rent or buy food, had ended up in the local workhouse. That winter, eighteen children of those families, all under the age of ten and all in the workhouse, had died of influenza or influenza-related pneumonia, according to their death certificates. And while we're on the subject, I have to say, going through the death certificates of young kids is a bloody miserable way to spend a morning. Anyway, so far, so depressingly Victorian London. 

The thing is though, we discovered that the accident wasn’t down to a neglectful foreman. We heard from local people descended from those families, and from a couple of ghosts who reside in the church crypt, that the factory owners had been greedy, had cut corners and compromised safety to increase profits, and when the inevitable had happened, they’d used a combination of lies, scare tactics, brutality, and bribery to keep it out of the papers and the courts. Which you could argue makes it a story more relevant to the present day.

The factory eventually closed just after the First World War. The huge, disused site, so full of toxic chemicals and old, flammable paint that no one ever took on the job of pulling it all down and cleaning up the area, had by then become a gathering place for every unable-to-rest factory ghost, for every pitiful ghost-child, for every ghostly being related in some way to the terrible event in 1878. In fact, we heard from the couple in the crypt that over time literally thousands of ghosts of the Victorian poor and mistreated of Hackney and Homerton and Stratford had taken up residence and had somehow become stuck there, trapped at the back of the factory where the accident had happened. 

We don’t fully understand why some ghosts get tied to a particular building or structure and others don’t. In this case, my hypothesis is that the emotional charge between the site of the accident and the ghosts was so strong they just couldn’t break free. And they might have gone on like that forever, stuck in their thousands at the rear of the factory, too weak to break away, too strong to finally fade and rest, but then a couple of months ago everything had changed when an itinerant revenant—not a local and so with no personal attachment to the site—had wandered in, looking for a way of soaking up enough energy so he could make some mischief. He’d listened to their tragic tales and had seen an opportunity. He’d stoked up fury and bitterness in their pitiful hearts, fed off their emotional energy, and had gone on a killing spree. Each individual ghost might have been relatively weak, but roused into a rabble, thousands strong, and fuelled with a century’s worth of anger, they could generate enough energy to make the ground rumble and solid walls shiver. 

We don’t know the identity of the revenant. He went by the name Chancer but I can’t find any relevant records under that name and I think it’s probably a nickname. According to the crypt ghosts he was _a nasty piece of work from south of the river, a ne’er-do-well from the lower classes; a bludger and a ramper_ —which I think is Victorian speak for a thoroughly bad sort. I’d been interested in how well-informed the crypt ghosts were, and, drawing close to the werelight I cast each time I visited them, they seemed relieved to be able to tell someone about the terrible goings-on they’d observed. On my first visit I’d made the mistake of asking them why they hadn’t become stuck at the factory—were they not also paupers of the parish, subject to the pull of the tragedy there? When I’d asked, the younger of the two—a plump woman with a lot of hair piled up on top of her head—had looked at me shocked, and enunciating very precisely had said, “Oh, young man, we are a different class, entirely!” It turns out they’d been the vicar of the parish and his wife at the time of the accident. They’d both died of influenza that winter; she’d succumbed first, then him two weeks later, his heart broken by all that had been lost.

As the ghosts of the East End poor had started to congregate in the factory, the Reverend and Mrs. Winsborough had taken to visiting them, trying to provide comfort and Christian hope to those trapped there. Thus they had continued their ecclesiastical duties of offering love and solace for many decades, unable to rest in peace themselves while so may souls in their parish remained in such torment. When Chancer had turned up, they’d continued to visit the factory but had made the sensible decision to keep out of his way. They had been extremely distressed by what they’d observed going on once he’d taken charge, but had been powerless to do anything about it. 

Whoever this Chancer was, he’d made an agreement with the now revenge-hungry hoard trapped in the factory that he’d go after the descendants of the factory owners—which was no skin off his nose; he was just some psychopathic bastard revenant who got his kicks from dishing out nasty deaths: it didn’t really matter to him who was on the receiving end of his tender ministrations. Ten minutes’ research on my tablet revealed that he had actually stuck to the agreement for the first murder—the victim, James Hastings, was a direct descendant of Augustus Hastings, the founder of the factory. James, coming from money, had a very nice house in Eaton Mews, a location that all the best London estate agents describe as a _premier Belgravia address_. We don’t know exactly how Chancer tracked him down, but we do know that the paint used to kill James Hastings was an exact match for old Empire paint recovered from the factory site.

Surprising no one, it seems that Chancer couldn’t be arsed searching out more relatives of Augustus. But he had got a taste for bumping off the rich of Belgravia. We can’t find any links between the factory and his other two victims, so as far as we can make out, he’d just taken to wandering the night streets, hiding in the shadows behind chic restaurants and white stuccoed mansions, paint can in hand. 

What Nightingale had walked into when he’d entered the factory, sounded truly horrifying. Chancer had been stalking up and down on a work bench, shrieking hate and murder and vengeance, while the whole of the back of the factory glowed and crackled with the unimaginable destructive power of thousands of trapped ghosts. As soon as they sensed Nightingale’s presence they directed every drop of their deadly energy towards him. Every single one of them was hell-bent on murderous revenge of their unjust deaths, and they weren’t about to let Nightingale get in their way. He’d had a split second to decide what to do and had gone with bringing the roof down on the lot of them in the hope that that would stop them in their tracks. He’d lifted and dropped a huge, immensely heavy factory roof, kept the factory walls standing, and had protected himself from tonnes of flying debris. And while he was doing all that, he’d also had to battle with thousands of ghosts including Chancer so that he could prevent himself from becoming murder victim number four for long enough to deal with the risk to us mere mortals. Not bad for a morning’s work.

* * *

It took a Folly/Belgravia Murder Investigation Team joint operation three weeks to wind the case up. They weren’t a particularly easy three weeks, I have to say. For one thing, Nightingale and Seawoll, who aren’t what you’d call mates at the best of times, had to find a way of documenting a case involving the magical destruction of a massive factory full of ghosts, without mentioning any terms that might cause distress amongst the higher echelons of the Metropolitan Police governance structure; terms like _magical_ and _ghost_. Luckily, Nightingale and Seawoll do have a couple of things in common: a lot of experience of solving difficult problems, and sheer bloody-minded determination. So, they found a way, not to keep everybody happy, exactly; that would definitely be an overly positive view of the emotional state of the upper echelons following this case. But they were eventually given permission to close the case, with all reports and documentation grudgingly approved. I've been trying to keep out of Seawoll's way since the whole Covent Garden/rhino tranquilliser debacle (I understand that that’s not quite the word he uses to describe it). No one at the Belgravia MIT said anything to me directly while we were sorting out the Empire case, but I got the strong impression it might be wise to keep out of his way for a while longer—so I did.

What I was doing while they were creatively accounting for the case was spending time with the Reverend and Mrs. Winsborough, just finding out as much as I could about the factory and the people who’d been associated with it. I got quite fond of the pair of them in the end. In their own way (admittedly a very Victorian, Church of England, _were you brought to civilisation by a missionary doing the Lord’s work, young man?_ kind of way) they were decent people who had done what they could to comfort the wretched poor, and who had been tormented for decades by their inability to ease the suffering they’d witnessed.

The day Nightingale had destroyed the site of the accident, the Winsboroughs had been safely in their crypt. As far as we can tell, once the back end of the factory was gone, with nothing left to keep the factory ghosts stuck, the vast majority of them had just faded away. Hopefully they’re at peace, finally. It’s possible there might still be a few lingering at the site, but if there are, the Winsboroughs haven’t seen them, and there have been no further reports of _weird sounds_ or _scary feelings_. And in fact, the last time I saw them, the Winsboroughs themselves were starting to fade. They were weak and almost transparent and I felt sad that I might not see them again, but they seemed genuinely happy to be able to rest, finally, and to go to meet their maker. They were very clear on that point—they were confident they were going to Heaven and they were very much ready to get on with it. I can’t say I blame them, given how long they’ve been waiting.

* * *

Anyway, all that is to say, uncomfortable though some of my interactions with the Murder Team were while we were sorting out the case, I was still grateful for the distraction. The problem is, the case was put to bed weeks ago and the Folly hasn’t had anything much going on since. I would have used some of my spare time to head to the coast to visit Lesley, but I’ve had an email from her saying she’s gone away to convalesce and that she’ll be in touch when she’s back. I’ve got a feeling maybe she hasn’t actually gone away, but the message is clear—she doesn’t want to see me right now.

So here I am, back to the late-night studying and long runs round the local squares and gardens. I’m sure Nightingale has noticed a change in my behaviour—I’ve caught a surprised look or two when I’ve announced I’m just going to do a bit more work on my Latin vocab. What I am fairly confident about, though, is that he’s got no idea why I’m suddenly keeping myself busy. 

In moments when I’ve been willing to admit that avoidance isn’t working (though I am getting a lot of stuff done, so I might argue that as a strategy it’s still useful, if not, strictly speaking, effective), I’ve tried applying a scientific approach to the situation. The bottom line is this: I fancy Nightingale; I didn’t used to, but I do now. I mean, like I said, I could always see that he’s good looking and that he dresses well, and the whole powerful wizard thing has always been, you know, impressive. But it’s like since he walked out of that factory, something’s shifted; it’s like he’s snapped into focus and now I’m really seeing him . . . and I’m liking what I see. _Shit_. 

Anyway, the scientific method, observation, gathering data et cetera. If I am now to think of myself as bisexual, which is hard to argue against, given how difficult it is to drag my eyes away when Nightingale smiles or stretches or absentmindedly massages the back of his neck when he’s tired, then pretty much by definition, that means I’m attracted to men as well as women. So, a couple of times I’ve sat in pubs, nursing a pint, and just looked at people—guys, I mean—to see who I find attractive. And the honest truth is, there hasn’t really been anyone. I mean, I’m not stupid; I can tell when a man is good-looking; I can even appreciate men on an aesthetic level. But not one of them have I seen and then thought _I wouldn’t mind snogging the face off him_ . . . to use an unfortunate expression. I seem to reserve those kind of thoughts for my boss. Lucky me.

I’ve also, in my less avoidant moments, wondered why I’m so intent on trying not to have my newly developed thoughts and feelings about Nightingale. I mean, I genuinely don’t think I’m homophobic; I fucking hope not. My personal philosophy has always been that affection and love and even just a night’s pleasure, are all good wherever you find them, as long as all parties are consenting and of age. It’s just . . . where I’ve always found affection and pleasure is with women. So it’s been a bit of shock, really, to discover that I’m arse over tit about a middle-aged, posh white bloke who wears a blazer with brass buttons on it as _casual wear_ , for fuck’s sake. No wonder I’m in denial.

And it’s not just that Nightingale’s a bloke: it’s what I’ve been thinking about him; what it is that’s got me arse over tit about him. I keep thinking about how suave and well-dressed he is; how unbelievably good he looks in a suit. And I keep thinking about how powerful and dangerous he is. And I know I don’t even know the half of it about his powers, which in itself should be a big warning sign, but—and I’m not proud of this—actually, I can get a semi just thinking about the fact that I don’t know what he’s capable of.

So, tailoring and power. Actually, tailoring and power and _control_. He is so in control of himself. I mean, he has power beyond anything most of us can imagine, but he keeps himself so buttoned-up—literally and figuratively—keeps it all tucked out of sight most of the time. It begs the question; just how fucking spectacular would he be if he was ever seriously not in control of himself? So, not only am I now, to the tune of one bloke, bisexual, but apparently I’m also a bit of a kinky sod; and that _is_ news. 

But even that’s not the whole story. Nightingale _is_ madly powerful and that _is_ a turn-on, but in some ways I think I might be stronger than he is. He doesn’t show it much—again, the whole buttoned-up, stiff upper lip thing—but there’s a sadness to him. I guess he’s lost so much, he’s had so long to lose people; to lose hopes and dreams. And it’s clear he’s witnessed terrible things and maybe he’s done some terrible things, and I think he carries all that round with him. And if nothing else, as far as I can see, he spent decades, literally decades, alone at the Folly except for Molly, and I think he’s trained himself not to need anyone because there wasn’t really anyone. I think he’s moved through the world being polite and courteous and trying to use his singular abilities for the general good, but all that time there was nowhere he fitted in. He believed there was no one left like him, and everyone—the Met, the demi-monde—everyone he came into contact with, were suspicious of him and kept him at a distance. And so, on the one hand, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s the most powerful wizard on the planet; and on the other, there are times I feel massively protective of him, times when I have the urge to put my arms round him and say _It’s ok; you’ve got me now._

The kicker, of course, is that there’s nothing much I can do about any of it. Well, I can be company for him, I can make sure that at least in the most practical sense, he’s not alone, but anything more than that is a non-starter. He’s my superior officer, for one thing, and we’re a team of two, so we don’t need anything making things awkward between us. And anyway, he’s Nightingale. _The_ Nightingale. A mystery wrapped in a fucking enigma. I don’t know anything about his sexuality; I don’t know if he wants intimacy in his life or if he’s even capable of intimacy. And he’s certainly never given even the smallest sign that he wants anything like that with me. 

So, there’s nothing to be done except suffer and hope the Sufi’s are right when they say _this too shall pass_.


	3. Chapter 3

I swear to God, it’s like the fucking universe is conspiring to drive me to complete distraction. And by the universe, of course I mean Nightingale: who else?

For a while we’ve been playing cat and mouse with a person of interest, to use the term beloved by American cop shows for someone you haven’t arrested—yet. In our case, the person of interest—who Nightingale has taken to referring to as the _Chiswick Irritant_ —is an individual, identity unknown, who, up until yesterday, has been causing relatively minor mischief using magic, in and around Chiswick—think small-scale but annoying property damage, mostly caused by fire: rubbish bins, a bus shelter, that sort of thing.

We’ve been thinking the person in question might be a ‘civilian’ who’s stumbled across magic through circumstances unknown. I didn’t say it was a brilliantly illuminating thought, but leads have been thin on the ground. Worryingly, one possibility is that the Chiswick Irritant has access to one of several books about magic, some in Latin but also some commentaries in English, that disappeared from the Senate House Library when the rooms housing their restricted collections were being renovated a while back. This is worrying because practitioners usually have to be shown a forma, not just read about it, to be able to reproduce it. It’s also worrying if books like that are now available on the open market. And, while we’re on the subject, I have to admit it was also a bit concerning that Nightingale hadn’t even known that the Senate House Library held magical books, until some were reported missing.

Anyway, yesterday afternoon a spontaneously combusting litter bin in a park near Chiswick was called in and directed our way, so off we went. Not surprisingly, Nightingale was pretty irritable about having to bring his wealth of DCI experience and magical powers to sniffing burnt-out bins for vestigia—and not even Central London bins. I offered to go on my own but since the events of the paint factory, he’s been finding reasons to not let me investigate possible magical activity by myself. I guess it’s touching in a way, but it’s also a real pain—I’ve got to be allowed to do the job without Nightingale babysitting me. I do know I get myself into scrapes occasionally, but I’m also pretty good at looking after myself. And anyway, it was Nightingale who was the one in mortal danger at the paint factory, not me, but it’s obviously shaken him up a bit. I hope he gets over it soon, because if he doesn’t I’m going to have to say something, and that’s a conversation I could do without. 

We examined what was left of the bin, which gave off the same vestigia as a couple of the other Chiswick crime scenes we’ve visited—the faint smell of stale lager and new bank notes, and some kind of generic Euro-pop playing in the background. The bin was in the shadow of a high wall built of pock-marked, yellow London stock bricks. We were four or five metres back from the wall, examining the ground in front of the bin, when the fucking wall blew up—booby-trapped. It wasn’t a daemon trap, thank God; I’m thinking of it more like an ordinary bomb but with magical explosive, though right now we’ve got no idea how it was made and we’re no nearer to getting our hands on the individual who made it. Also, troublingly, it seems like pretty advanced magic for a civilian new to the craft, so that’s probably that theory dead in the water. 

Nightingale managed to throw up a shield just as the first shock wave hit us, but even so, we were way too close to the thing when it went off. The blast flung me off my feet, high enough that I actually had time to think about just how bad a bad landing could be. The good news was that we were right on the top of a grassy bank which sloped down to a flower bed, resplendent, on this sunny, late August afternoon, with a colourful display of daisy-like flowers in shades of pink and mauve. Good news, because if I have to plummet to the ground from a considerable height, I’d choose grass over concrete any day. The _bad_ news about the grassy bank was that it fell away quite sharply, meaning that even if I’d just been blown horizontally by the blast, I’d have still found myself in thin air as the ground fell away from my scrambling feet. As it was, the blast provided some up-lift as well as horizontal movement, which put me a good three metres above the ground. And if I’ve learned anything from watching those old Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote cartoons, it’s that hovering in mid-air, feet paddling wildly, can only end one way.

I landed on the downward slope, actually on my feet, knees bending to absorb the shock, but I had way too much momentum to have a snowball in hell’s chance of staying upright, so I flung myself onto my side and rolled down the rest of the slope. I came to a stop amongst the flowers, unharmed but in an undignified heap. Nightingale, whether by coincidence or not, clearly decided on the same strategy, which is why, two seconds later, I found myself serving as a brake to his roll through the flower bed . . . and why, by the time we both, finally, came to a halt, I’d ended up flat on my back, surrounded by purple daisies, Nightingale sprawled on top of me.

I’d be lying if I said I’ve never given any thought to what it might be like to have Nightingale on top of me. But I do want to make clear that I don’t go out of my way to fantasise about him. For one thing, it doesn’t seem like the respectful thing to do, to perve about your boss. For another thing, I’m not an idiot; I do know how easily distracted I am at the best of times, without purposely cultivating a load of images and fantasies about the bloke. I don’t know a huge amount about brain science, but even I’ve heard that _neurons that fire together, wire together_ , and I don’t need a selection of dodgy scenarios starring Nightingale, hard-wired into my brain. So yes, there have been thoughts of Nightingale lying on me, but I’ve tried to keep them to a minimum; and I have to say, not once have those thoughts featured us rolling around in the sunshine, surrounded by flowers. Shows you how limited my imagination is, I guess.

It took me a little while to register that Nightingale was making no efforts to move, which left me squashed under his surprisingly solid weight, his chest pressing down on my face. His suit jacket was undone, and this being a beautiful two-piece, cut in the classic, early 1960s Italian style, I found my nose and mouth pressed not against a waistcoat, but buried in the fine, soft cotton of his pale blue shirt. And I think being pinned to the ground by Nightingale can excuse me for not immediately noticing that the straw-yellow bricks of the wall were raining down all around us but not on us: Nightingale still had his shield up and was staying put so he could protect both of us from a serious battering. Of course, once my brain started working again, I could sense his signare all around me—the mown grass and willow and plimsolls of a summer long ago. There was also the far more tangible warm body scent of a man who’s been striding around in a wool suit on a sunny day. I caught myself thinking that it might be nice if the bricks just carried on flying about for a bit longer so we didn’t have to move, but I shoved that thought to one side. I’m an officer of the Metropolitan Police and as such I should be hoping for order and safety, not the continued precipitation of late-Georgian building materials in order to keep my boss lying on top of me. 

In any case, regardless of what I might have wanted, gravity inevitably did its thing, the air around us relinquished the bricks, and everything went quiet again. I sensed the moment Nightingale stopped the shield, and then just for a second or two he seemed to slump, so that his body pressed even more heavily, and I got the strong impression that he was actually resting on me. But then he rallied and he lifted himself up onto his forearms so he could make eye-contact with me—an unsettling experience under the circumstances.

“You’re unharmed, Peter?”

“I think so, yes, sir. You’re not, though.” He had a nasty-looking graze all down the left side of his face; a brick had obviously got him before he could get the shield up. 

He carefully touched his left cheek, grimaced, then shrugged. “Nothing too serious, I don’t think. I just wasn’t quite quick enough with the shield.”

It suddenly seemed important to change the subject so I could keep my urge to stroke his poor, battered cheek at manageable levels. I turned my head to one side to look at the mess around us. “Shame about the daisies.”

“They’re cosmos.”

I must have looked puzzled.

“The flowers—they’re cosmos. C. bipinnatus.”

He knows the Latin names for park bedding plants—of course he does. “Shame about the cosmos then.”

He looked around and sighed. “Quite.” He seemed genuinely sad about them, or about something, anyway.

Finally, he lifted his weight off me and rolled away, pushing himself to his feet rather gracefully, I thought, given the situation. He surveyed the scene of devastation at the top of the slope and then frowned down at me. “Come on, Peter; look sharp, we need to get back up there; check for casualties; secure the scene.” 

He sounded irritable now, as if I’d been the one delaying us in the flowerbed, which seemed unfair but also about right in terms of a constable’s lot in life. So I scrambled to my feet and followed him up the slope, actually groaning out loud at how much my body ached. Luckily, when we got back up to the top and inspected the heaps of rubble that were all that was left of the wall, it was clear that no one had been hurt. I took the job of phoning it in while Nightingale used his calm, authoritative voice to move back the little crowd of gawpers that had already appeared.

I got out my phone—a Samsung I’d retrofitted with a hardware cut-off to keep it safe in just this kind of situation where some unanticipated magical shitstorm would otherwise have fried it; it seemed to have survived my encounter with the grassy bank and flowerbed. As I was making the call, Nightingale knelt down to get close to the vestigia coming off the bricks. A guy wearing a baseball cap with the words _Make Peckham Shit Again_ on it started filming him on his phone, no doubt thinking it’d be a laugh to post a video on YouTube amusingly entitled something like _‘The filth sniffing bricks.’_ I was just about to go over and politely advise him to put his phone away when Nightingale glanced up and saw what he was doing. A second later the bloke swore as his phone died in his hand: how very unfortunate and not at all suspicious. Nightingale then made the wise decision to wait until the on-lookers got bored and drifted away before doing anything else to draw their interest, and that meant there really wasn’t anything for them to see except a few dusty heaps of bricks. Even so, a couple of them were taking pictures and they seemed pretty excited about it, and I couldn't quite get my head round that: how could a couple of photos of rubble possibly be that thrilling? But then I suppose my experience of the explosion had included magic-fuelled flight and being pinned to the ground by Nightingale while surrounded by a sea of cosmos, so it’s hardly a fair comparison, is it?


	4. Chapter 4

It’s eight days after the wall in Chiswick exploded at us (and yes, we’re pretty sure it was _at us_ , rather than just some random explosive nonsense), and we’re no nearer to solving the case. None of the few potential leads we had have gone anywhere and we haven’t managed to dig up anything new, so we’ve had to accept that for now we’ll have to shelve the case until either another lead comes to light or the Chiswick Irritant makes another move. In the meantime, the Belgravia Murder Investigation Team is apparently also stuck with one of their cases, and now, because it’s became apparent there’s a slight possibility of something _odd_ about the murder, we’ve been called in to consult.

This is the first time I’ll have seen Detective Chief Inspector Seawoll since Covent Garden and I can’t say I’m particularly looking forward to it. If, pre-Covent Garden, he saw the Folly as an aggravation, but an occasionally necessary aggravation, now, following the wrecking of an historic tourist mecca, posh people rioting, and me injecting him with a shit load of rhino tranquiliser, I imagine his view of magic in general, and the Folly in particular, won't have improved. 

Nightingale is quiet as he parks the Jag in the station car park. Maybe he’s reluctant to see Seawoll too? Maybe he’s feeling awkward about the whole lying on top of me in a flowerbed thing—something which, by the way, we have very much been _not_ talking about? Maybe his face is hurting? Who knows? A week on from the exploding wall he’s sporting a stunning bruise on the left side of his face, a bruise which has reached the yellow-purple stage and looks truly spectacular against his pale-even-for-a-white-bloke skin. All week it’s been difficult not to stare, difficult not to reach out and trace the outline of it with my fingertips. It looks painful, and sometimes it makes Nightingale look vulnerable; it's evidence that he can be hurt. Other times, it just makes him look like he’s taken up bare-knuckle boxing as a hobby. If I’m honest, both options have been stirring up feelings in me and I’ve spent a lot of time hiding out in the tech cave. Anyway, the point is, it’s possible that his lack of conversation in the car says more about the state of his face than anything more _problematic_.

Nightingale’s phone rings just as we get up to the third floor where Seawoll has his office, so he steps back into the stairwell to take the call and nods to indicate that I should go in without him—oh joy. I knock and hear a growl which I take to be Seawoll’s invitation to go in. The man himself is standing near the window at the far side of his desk. The desk is a huge, wooden thing, but not like the ones in the Folly that are big and solid but still pleasingly proportioned and have the patina of time and centuries of beeswax polish about them. This one looks like it's come from Oak Furniture Village or some other retail park place that prides itself on the size and weight of its furniture without giving a monkey's about what it actually looks like. The kind of place where their advertising basically says "It's made of wood; what more do you want!?"

Seawoll looks past me for Nightingale and then glares at me. He doesn’t seem thrilled to see me on my own, but I can’t imagine that Nightingale being here would make him any happier.

“What the fuck ‘appened to Nightingale?” Right, so, no _Nice to see you, Peter; the weather’s grand for the time of year, isn't it?_ small talk, then.

“I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”

“I mean, Constable, that I watched the two of you walk in from the car park and he’s got a bruise on the side of his face big enough you could see it from bloody space. There are fuckin’ cosmonauts on the International Space Station discussing it as we speak.”

 _Oh_. “A close encounter with a magical incendiary device last week, sir.”

Seawoll looks like he’s debating whether he believes me or whether he thinks its more likely that someone just got so pissed off with Nightingale they decided to punch him. I can imagine that Seawoll might sympathise with people having the impulse to punch Nightingale, but personally, I’d like to see anyone try; well, not without a weaponised wall, anyway.

Seawoll beckons me over to where he’s standing by the window. Close-up, he’s enormous and scary, like a bear that’s learned how to walk on it’s hind legs but is really pissed-off about having to. If his aim is intimidation, I have to say, things are going well for him so far. He frowns at me. “And where were you when your inspector was being blown up?”

“I was there too, sir. It was raining bricks—it could have been very nasty.”

Seawoll looks closely at me, still frowning, and I realise he’s inspecting me for bruises. 

“And these bricks only had it in for higher ranking officers, did they?”

“Inspector Nightingale shielded me,” I blurt out, which is an accurate account of events, but still, to my ears, the way it comes out does sound a bit . . . romance novel. Not that I’ve ever read any romance novels, but I’ve got enough aunties who do read them to have seen plenty of book covers featuring petite, pretty women looking up in grateful awe at the manly hero who’s just saved her. I realise it’s very likely I’m the petite, pretty woman in this scenario, and I’m not feeling that great about it. 

Seawoll stares at me, his face a slab of barely contained something. “Shielded you, did he? How very fucking gallant of him.”

And to prove that the universe really has got it in for me, at that moment there comes the unmistakable sound of Nightingale clearing his throat. I turn round and he’s standing in the office doorway, leaning against the doorframe. There’s something about his mild facial expression that brings to mind the phrase _the calm before the storm_.

As Nightingale steps into the office, Seawoll grins at him. “That bruise is a bit tasty, Thomas.”

Nightingale looks back at him, blandly, and says, “Thank you for your concern, Alexander,” which is such a hilariously intentional misreading of the situation, I nearly snigger out loud. Nightingale glances at me and it occurs to me that that little bit of fun might have been for my benefit; then he turns his full attention back to Seawoll. “I believe a case has got the better of you, Alexander? Peter and I would be happy to give you the benefit of our experience, but we do rather need to get on with it.”

Holy. Shit. Seawoll looks like he’s about to Hulk out. He goes over to his desk and leans on it, his big, meaty hands gripping the edge of the desktop. From where I’m standing, back by the window behind him, I’ve got a really scary view of his massive shoulders and back muscles tensing under his jacket. An image appears in my head of him lifting the whole sodding desk clear off the floor and hurling it at Nightingale: I hope I haven’t suddenly developed the ability to have premonitions. Meanwhile, Nightingale continues to look utterly unperturbed. From an effective policing perspective, I’m not convinced that stoking up the animosity in his relationship with Seawoll is the best thing Nightingale could be doing. But I do have to admit, Nightingale's got balls of fucking steel, and, as a spectator sport, it doesn’t half get the adrenaline going.

* * *

An hour later we step back out onto the street, and it's a relief to be away from Seawoll's monumental pissed off-ness. We’ve agreed to do some research in the Folly libraries, and a couple of new actions have been put on HOLMES for yours truly to deal with over the next few days. So I’ve come away with more work, but, looking on the bright side, no desks were thrown, nobody actually tried to give anybody else a slap, and at no point in the conversation was rhino tranquiliser mentioned—so it could have been so much worse. 

Instead of heading back to the Jag, Nightingale suggests a coffee and he steers us to a nice little Italian café hidden in a back street behind the nick. It’s a pleasant day and we sit in the sunshine at the wrought iron table the café owner has put on the pavement outside her establishment. We talk about Seawoll's murder case and sip our very strong espressos. If we’d been sitting in a room at the Folly, the presence of an extremely large elephant would have been impossible to avoid. To be honest, the elephant is pretty noticeable even on our little stretch of Belgravia pavement. Eventually, Nightingale carefully places his tiny espresso cup in its saucer.

“Peter, I’m sorry you’re caught up in Inspector Seawoll’s animosity towards the Folly.”

I go for the easier line of discussion, because funnily enough, I can’t quite think of a way of acknowledging Seawoll's 'gallant' comment. “Why is he so hacked off with you?”

Nightingale thinks about it, frowning slightly. “Alexander is an excellent police officer and detective; I hope you understand that?”

I’m surprised that that’s where he takes the conversation, but I agree, because Seawoll _is_ excellent at what he does. For all his thick, scary Northerner act, he runs, by all accounts, the most effective MIT in the Met. “Of course, sir.”

Nightingale nods. “Good. I think the trouble is, he hates it when he can’t control something; especially when that something is dangerous.”

 _Okaaay_. And because I can always be relied on to ask the stupid questions, I say, “You mean . . . you, sir?”

Nightingale looks at me, startled. “ _Magic_ , Peter; I mean he can’t control magic—or the people who use it for nefarious ends. It isn’t rational in the way he wants things to be; it can’t always be subjected to the investigative procedures the current-day Met favours. Magical criminals don’t play by the same rules as the usual variety.”

Given that we seem to be in a sharing kind of mood, I take a risk. “In some ways the Folly hasn’t always followed the rules either, has it? It hasn’t always kept to approved Met procedures?”

Nightingale’s eyes narrow and I start to think that I’ve seriously overstepped the mark and I’m about to get the bollocking I probably deserve; but then he sighs. “No, I suppose not.” He picks up his empty coffee cup and stares at it as if he's trying to conjure up another shot. Nothing happens, obviously, because he's a Newtonian wizard, not a Star Trek replicator. He starts talking again, but he carries on looking at the cup. “You know, it is rather difficult to run a modern police unit on one’s own; to keep up with all the changes, the technology; the ridiculous, exponential growth in administrative procedures.” He looks weary as much as cross, and for a moment I get a glimpse, again, of just how isolated he’s been, stuck in the Folly tending ancient agreements with ancient people who don’t quite trust him and who keep him at arms length. And meanwhile, the Met has been dragging itself into the twenty-first century and moving further and further away from him. It suddenly seems important for him to understand that I’m not judging him.

“I really can see that, sir.”

He looks at me, carefully, like he’s trying to read me. After a pause, he says, “The other difficulty is that Alexander will never be able to fully appreciate the intricacies, the depths, of a master-apprentice relationship. No one can, unless they’ve been part of such an arrangement.”

I’m not a bad police officer some of the time, if I do say so myself, and, stupid questions notwithstanding, one of the things I have learned is that when your person of interest is talking, when they’re telling you interesting things, you keep your mouth shut and you just let them talk. I nod in what I hope is an encouraging way.

“He finds the fact that we live together at the Folly, strange, of course. And however protective Alexander is of his officers—and he is, very much so—he finds the fact that I’ve sworn a solemn oath to protect you—with my life if it ever came to that—archaic and melodramatic.” This last bit has the ring of a direct quote about it. 

I knew there was a reason why me and Nightingale should steer clear of talking about important things; personal things. It's actually pretty overwhelming having him sit across a small table from me and quietly, but in all seriousness, say that he’d lay down his life for me; that he’s vowed to do exactly that. I mean, on one level, most of us would take a hit for a colleague if there was really no other option—it’s the deal with the job, really. But the whole solemn oath bit; the bit that makes Nightingale sound like some kind of early Renaissance knight, chivalrous and true, makes it feel way more powerful and mysterious. And knowing that his oath is specifically for me, _only_ for me . . . yeah. It's not like I didn't know any of this, it's just hearing him talk about it is, well, like I said, a bit overwhelming. 

He isn’t done, yet. “For me, protecting you is the central, most important duty of my being your master. It’s more important even than guiding you to become a skilled and moral wizard. I take my oath very seriously.” He goes quiet for a minute during which _he_ inspects the two carnations sitting in a little bud vase on the table, and _I_ try not to fidget. I notice, with fascination, that the tips of his ears have gone pink and I have to look away so I don't stare. Eventually, he looks at me and says, “In the park last week, Peter, whatever DCI Seawoll may think, I was acting on that oath—as any master should. You understand that?” And I believe him . . . up to a point. But there’s just something in the way his gaze slides away from mine that suddenly makes it hard for me to breathe.

What I say is, “Of course, sir. Thank you.” 

But what I think is: _OK_ , but whatever else it was, it _was_ fucking gallant . . . and I loved every single second of it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going on holiday tomorrow so I'm posting this chapter a little earlier than usual and the next one may go up a little late - I'm not sure if I'll have wifi where I'm staying, and in any case, my plan is to spend most of the time away snoozing in front of a log fire and/or eating my own weight in mince pies :-)

It’s a Saturday morning in mid-September, a couple of weeks after the challenging meeting with Seawoll and the subsequent espressos with a side order of solemn oaths. The Belgravia MIT’s murder case has finally been solved and there’s nothing urgent we at the Folly need to attend to, which means we’re just finishing a leisurely breakfast. Molly often produces something fish-based for weekend breakfasts—kedgeree, kippers, that kind of thing, and Nightingale seems to eat it all fairly happily (or at least without complaint), but I haven’t really managed to get my head round fish this early in the day. So I’m relieved when I lift the domed lid off the silver serving platter on the sideboard to find scrambled eggs and smoked salmon underneath. And yes, I know smoked salmon is fish, but for some reason my morning stomach seems to be able to cope with it, especially when it’s smothered with a heap of buttery eggs and shovelled down with a stack of toast.

The last few weeks have been a bit easier on me in terms of unsettling thoughts and feelings about Nightingale, which is pretty surprising given how stirred up I felt when he decided to start channelling knights in armour. I put the relative lack of Nightingale-focussed mental and emotional shenanigans down to being around Seawoll and Stephanopoulos so much while we were assisting on their case, my theory being that having the pleasure of their company on a regular basis is the Met’s equivalent of putting bromide in the tea. I’ve barely been noticing Nightingale’s clothes or the way he carries his cane with quiet authority. So it comes as a genuine surprise when I catch myself admiring his hands across the breakfast table; his long fingers with their neat, blunt nails, as he spreads marmalade on a slice of toast. _Here we go again._

He’s been engrossed in the Telegraph for most of the meal, which isn’t as bad-mannered as it sounds: I’ve been reading The Once and Future King—a first edition, no less—which I found in the small fiction collection housed in the bookcases on the first landing. Once Nightingale finishes his toast he lowers the paper just enough so he can see me over the top of it. “Peter, are you aware that it’s High Harvest soon? I can’t remember if it’s come up in conversation before.” 

“No, sir.” I’ve no idea what he’s talking about.

He carefully folds the paper so the crossword is on top, then places it on the table. “The older magical traditions in Britain mark the start, mid-point and end of the harvest period: Lammas and Samhain are the festivals at the start and the end; High Harvest is the mid-point—it falls on the autumn equinox.”

“When the day and night are exactly equal in duration.”

“Exactly. It’s a key time in the old calendar to give thanks for another year’s harvest, but more broadly, to celebrate abundance, the fruits of one’s labour; that type of thing. It’s a rather important time of year for the demi-monde.”

“OK.” I can’t work out where this is going. I mean, how much of a big deal can harvesting be in a megacity like London? It turns out, quite a big deal.

“Non-Newtonian practitioners, country practitioners, witches, fae and so on—all the folk touched by magic in some way or other—tend to come together for High Harvest gatherings. I suppose because the evidence of the harvest and the abundance of the natural world is rather invisible in London, it’s felt to be particularly important to mark High Harvest in the city. It’s considered ill-mannered not to show appreciation for the produce we consume here, but more than that, High Harvest is a celebration of fecundity, fertility, boughs laden with fruit, fields full of crops, everything in the natural world ripening and ready to pick.”

It all sounds a bit sexual, a bit reproductive, and he does start to look a little flushed as he's telling me about it. Something wild occurs to me. “You’re not trying to tell me there’s pagan sex rituals or something else dodgy like that at this High Harvest, are you?!”

I must look shocked or worried or both because his mouth twitches into a smile. “No, no ritual sex at High Harvest.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

He still looks amused. “That would be Beltane, at the beginning of May. Beltane is the festival for sex rituals.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I assure you I’m not, Peter. Many groups of non-Newtonian practitioners are very keen on that sort of thing.”

Now it’s my turn to have heat flooding into my face. “And as Metropolitan Police officers, we’re fine with that, are we?” 

He gives me a ridiculously man-of-the-world shrug and the creases at the corners of his eyes deepen as he smiles at me in a way that is totally not fair. “As long as the rituals involve consenting adults and no one comes to harm—and I have to say, all the groups I’m aware of who practice these kinds of rituals take a great deal of care over that sort of thing—and as long as they take place on private land or at least somewhere where unsuspecting members of the public are unlikely to get a surprise viewing, then yes, we’re fine with it.” He looks almost nostalgic. 

Holy shit—if Nightingale’s trying to tell me he’s witnessed pagan sex rituals, or fuck me, he’s taken part in . . . no, the DCI Nightingale I know is never seen outside the Folly in anything less than a full suit and tie combo; I can’t see that he has a past involving running around Epping Forest, naked except for a set of antlers. Conjures up an extremely distracting image, though. I really need to focus. “So, High Harvest is relevant to the Folly how, exactly, sir?”

Nightingale looks like it’s taking him a little effort to come back from the talk of Beltane sex rituals too, which is helping nothing. “Ah, well, the equinox is next Friday and we should both be at the celebration.”

“Gets a bit lively, does it? Will we need uniform back-up or something more _specialised_?” My mind’s turned to Frank Caffery and his band of merry men.

Nightingale shakes his head. “No, nothing like that. It’s a very peaceful, mellow sort of affair. It’s quite lovely, actually. It takes place at the Guildhall, which they decorate with fruit and flowers and sheaves of corn and so on. Think of it as a bit like a harvest festival service, but with more eating and drinking.”

“And fewer vicars?” 

“Indeed.” I’ve amused him, which makes me ridiculously pleased with myself. 

“So if it’s that peaceful, what will we be doing there?”

“Well, I’ve always gone to represent the Folly.”

“You usually go on your own?” It’s not really my business and I’m a bit surprised he answers.

“For the most part, yes.”

I want to ask more about that _for the most part_ but I add the question to the growing list of ones I don’t feel I can ask my governor but really want to know the answers to, right next to _what’s your experience of sex magic rituals?_ I approach the issue from a different direction. “You’re sure you want me to come with you?”

He misunderstands what I’m getting at and frowns. “You’re a member of the Folly, Peter. Of course you must be there. I thought you were keen on being involved with the community?”

Lucky I didn’t have big plans for next Friday then, isn’t it? I’m just about to leave the table but it turns out he’s not done yet.

“The festivities will start an hour after sunset and evening dress is de rigueur; do you have a dinner jacket et cetera?”

“There wasn’t much call for that kind of thing on the Peckwater Estate.”

He smiles. “Of course. In any case, velvet jackets in colours other than black tend to be favoured at High Harvest. I’ll get you an appointment with my tailor for Monday. I see Mr Beatty at Dege & Skinner—their shop is at 10, Saville Row.” He looks thoughtful. “I suppose there won’t be time for something bespoke, but they do some very serviceable off-the-peg garments which can be quickly altered to improve fit.”

 _Okaay_. “That all sounds great, sir, but my salary just about runs to Top Shop, so . . .”

He looks puzzled, though I’m not sure if that’s because he has no idea what Top Shop is or because not being able to afford a Saville Row tailor is such an alien concept.

Evidently, the penny drops. “Yes, of course; well, there’s a small Folly entertainment fund which I don’t think has been dipped into since the 1970s, so you can use some of that.”

With that, he pushes his chair back and stands up—the most interesting breakfast in months is over. But apparently it isn’t; not quite. He tucks the Telegraph under his arm, turns away as if to go and then half turns back. He looks in my general direction but doesn’t quite manage to make eye contact when he says, “My velvet dinner jacket is burgundy. It’s probably a good idea for us not to be matching. Don’t want it to look like we’ve got a Folly formal-wear uniform, do we?”

Because that would be the weird part of all of this. 

He looks studiously at the portrait of Newton on the wall behind my left shoulder. “I thought you might want to consider midnight blue.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well it turns out the cottage I'm staying in does have wifi - so here's the next chapter :-)

I know it’s sounds vain because it _is_ vain, but I can’t stop looking at myself in the mirror in my bedroom. I wear suits a lot these days for work but comparing this Dege and Skinner evening wear to my usual suit is a bit like comparing a Jaguar Mark 2 to—let’s pick a mediocre car at random—a Ford Fiesta: the latter won't make your bank manager weep and is reasonably adequate for its intended purpose, but the former has the power to make you grin like an idiot every time you see it.

The appointment with Mr. Beatty (whose first name very much remained undisclosed) took almost an hour, which given I was buying ready-to-wear, was not what I was expecting. But then as Mr Beatty pointed out, the term ready-to-wear is a misnomer as far as Dege and Skinner is concerned: _a decent starting point_ might be more accurate. When I arrived at the shop, he briefly looked me over and then immediately told me what size jacket I needed, my waist measurement, and—a bit cheeky, this—my inside leg measurement; all in inches, all correct. We then had a lengthy discussion about cut, fit, bowties, shirts, and types of cloth for the jacket. Who knew you can get velvet made out of different fabrics like cotton and silk and nasty man-made stuff that Dege and Skinner absolutely does not stock and which made Mr Beatty shudder just mentioning it? Consider me educated.

When all that was settled (with a blush-inducing _I’m sure Mr Nightingale wouldn’t want to see you in anything other than silk, Mr Grant_ , from Mr Beatty) we finally got onto the colour of the jacket. We looked at a selection; they were all beautiful and jewel-like; the kinds of colours you want to dive into; to bathe in. I hesitated over a deep, rich, bottle green for a while, but in the end, inevitably, I went with the midnight blue. My choice made Mr Beatty sigh, contentedly, and that made me wonder whether Nightingale would react in the same way. I was just about to slip the jacket off again when Mr Beatty produced a piece of card with pins pushed through it and proceeded to pin the jacket, trousers and then shirt in various places to fine-tune the fit. I’d thought it all looked pretty good as it was, but I was more than happy to bow to Mr Beatty’s infinitely superior knowledge. As I finally headed towards the door, back in my own clothes and late for a meeting with Dr Walid, Mr Beatty shook my hand and smiled and said _I think you’ll be pleased, Mr Grant._

* * *

He wasn’t wrong. Everything fits like a glove, if gloves fitted in such a way as to make your shoulders and chest look bigger, your waist narrower and your legs longer. I’m not saying I looked bad to start with—my body’s ok, but the bloke has worked magic, and I use that term with some authority. I keep stepping away from the mirror and then coming back to have another look . . . and the thought that I’m going to walk down to the atrium and Nightingale’s going to see me looking like this is making me giddy and lightheaded. 

The only problem is, I can’t tie the bloody bowtie. Obviously, I’ve never had reason to wear one before, and obviously, Dege and Skinner don’t sell those ready tied ones that you fasten round your neck with a bit of elastic. I’ve been trying to follow demonstration videos on YouTube but I just can’t get it to stay tied, so at the moment it’s draped loosely round my neck in the style of James Bond sauntering home at dawn after a debauched night out. As a look, I think it’s got a lot going for it, but I imagine it won’t pass muster for High Harvest. I can’t decide who to ask to tie it for me—Nightingale or Molly: both options are a bit disturbing, though for different reasons. I guess I’ll just see who I bump into first—if I can actually manage to tear myself away from the mirror.

* * *

As I walk down the stairs into the atrium, Nightingale’s waiting for me. He looks stunning standing there in the most exquisitely cut, deep wine-coloured velvet dinner jacket, black trousers, white shirt and a perfectly tied black bowtie. He’s got his hands in his trouser pockets and he looks relaxed and comfortable, as if wearing madly expensive bespoke evening wear is the most natural thing in the world for him; as if he’s stood in the Folly atrium dressed like a character out of an Evelyn Waugh novel on thousands of Friday nights . . . and I suppose he has; just not recently. He breaks into a smile when he sees me and I don’t have any control over my face at all—all I can do is grin back at him.

“Come over here, Peter, so I can see you in the light. Let’s have a look at Mr Beatty’s handiwork.”

I walk towards him and stop under the chandelier that hangs from the centre of the atrium’s glazed roof. He looks me over, appraisingly, which makes me want to fidget, and then he nods and it’s clear from his expression that he approves; really approves. My whole face floods with heat and I reckon my cheeks must be a pretty close match for his jacket.

“Well, Peter, the fit is slightly closer than I would wear, but that’s the modern style. You look exceedingly handsome.”

I manage to meet his eyes, though God knows how. “So do you, sir.”

Nightingale glances down at his outfit and frowns, and for a moment I think he’s going to do an _Oh, this old thing_ , dismissal of the compliment. But then he stops himself and his eyes soften into one of those self-deprecating smiles of his that make me want to kiss him. Of course I don’t kiss him, but I really want to.

“Thank you, Peter. I must admit, it is a pleasure to get dressed up every now and again.” He delivers this in a way that implies his usual attire is a pair of frayed trackie bottoms and an ancient Led Zep t-shirt.

He turns his attention back to me. “I really do think you need to tie your tie, though.” 

And maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but as he looks at me I think that maybe he’s lost just a little of his usual cool, unflappable demeanour . . . and that thought is quite enough to get some adrenaline pumping round my system. I drag my attention back to the matter in hand: “If I knew how to tie it, sir, I would.”

“Ah, I see. They can be tricky when you’re not used to them.” His hands come out of his pockets and make it halfway to my tie before he realises what he’s doing . . . and he shoves them back in his pockets pretty sharpish. I take hold of the ends of the tie but God knows what I think I’m going to do with it: if I couldn’t tie it standing in front of a mirror while watching a Cambridge law student called Crispin tying his bowtie in slow-motion on YouTube, then I sure as hell am not going to manage it standing two feet away from Nightingale while he pulls this level of suave shit.

There’s a bit of an awkward silence during which my brain fails to come up with a single thing to say—and that is _not_ a common experience for me: usually when I’m on a bit of an adrenaline high, it’s a struggle to shut myself up. 

Eventually, Nightingale clears his throat. “Would you like some help with it?”

“Thank you,” I say, because the tie’s clearly not going to tie itself and at this rate we’ll never actually get out of the Folly, let alone make it to High Harvest.

He reaches across the gap between us and quickly ties the thing, but he’s not happy with the results. “I’m not used to tying them from this angle,” he grumbles. “I’ve made rather a dog’s dinner of it.” Thinking about some of the things Molly feeds Toby, the phrase doesn’t exactly conjure up an appealing image. 

I’m rescued from this train of thought by more throat clearing from Nightingale. “I’ll have to stand behind you in front of the mirror and do it that way.”

 _God help me_. We walk over to the full-length mirror near the door that leads to the entrance lobby. I face the mirror and Nightingale stands behind me and wraps his arms round me, and I can feel his chest pressing against my back. I can’t tell you the struggle I have trying not to groan out loud, and at the same time, trying not to look like I’m having to stifle a groan. Let’s just say that my face does some very weird things that I purposely don’t watch in the mirror.

Nightingale leans a little to one side so he can see round me, and his hands move confidently against my chest. As he concentrates on the tie, I take quick peeks at the two of us, both looking as debonair as fuck, his arms wrapped round me and his head so close to mine that I can feel his hair tickling my cheek. I only take quick peeks because that’s all I can cope with. 

When the tie is done to his satisfaction, Nightingale’s hands come to rest against my chest and he’s got to be able to feel my heart hammering away, but there’s nothing I can do about it—my heart seems to have a life of its own, these days. He meets my gaze in the mirror and just for a moment, the look in his eyes, his beautiful grey eyes, makes me think of storms; of wild, gale-driven seas the colour of pewter: everything the very opposite of control and calm. But then he smiles and the storm subsides. He pats me on the shoulder before stepping away. “Come on; High Harvest is calling us, Peter.”

* * *

We get into the car—the Jag, obviously, Nightingale pulls his leather driving gloves on, and I have an out of body experience looking at the pair of us sitting there in full 007 mode, about to drive through the evening streets of Belgravia in a Jaguar Mark 2. I know I have to deal with some weird and dangerous shit in this job, but it occurs to me, and not for the first time, that working at the Folly with Nightingale sure as hell beats the life the Case Progression Unit might have offered. 

But, as Nightingale noses the car out into the traffic, something occurs to me that takes the shine off things, just a little. “I feel bad that Molly wasn’t invited.”

Nightingale shakes his head. “Well, you can stop feeling bad, Peter: she _was_ invited; she is every year. She’s just not keen on being around crowds of people. And to be honest, I don’t think she enjoys seeing people eat food that she hasn’t cooked. She’ll have a pleasant evening in her own way, I’m sure.”

I can’t quite imagine what counts as a pleasant evening for Molly, or even if I want to imagine, so I change the subject. “Is there anything I should know about High Harvest, sir? Don’t eat the food or else I’ll be pregnant by mid-winter? Don’t dance with pixies?”

Nightingale smiles but keeps his eyes on the road. “Well, as long as you only partake of the officially provided refreshments, you’ll be under no problematic obligations. Just don’t accept anything from individuals you don’t know.”

“My mum always told me not to accept sweets from strangers.”

He smiles softly again and it does odd things to my insides. “You have an exceedingly sensible mother.”

He indicates and swings left onto High Holborn. “You’re unlikely to encounter any pixies tonight, Peter, so you can put your mind at rest on that account. And as far as pregnancy is concerned, I told you, that’s more of a Beltane matter. High Harvest tends to involve lounging around on extravagantly upholstered chaises longues, eating jellied fruits and honey cake and drinking elderberry champagne; all very pleasurable but hardly likely to result in pregnancy, even for those where pregnancy is actually a possibility.” He glances at me and then quickly looks back at the road. “Think Alma-Tadema classical beauties drowsing on sofas.”

So, as we drive east from King Edward Street onto Montague Street and then round the roundabout past the Museum of London, that's exactly what I do—I think of beauties drowsing on sofas. 

Well . . . I think of Nightingale.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some spoilery notes at the end of this final chapter

Nothing Nightingale tells me on the drive over really prepares me for High Harvest. We walk across Guildhall Yard towards the arched oak doors in the centre of the Guildhall's pale, 15th Century façade. Two enormous trees in wooden tubs flank the doors, and as we get closer, I can see that one tree is heavy with red apples, the other with pears. We make our way into the Great Hall and as we enter I come to a halt and just stand there with my mouth hanging open. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t anything like this. There are a lot more of the huge trees in tubs; they mostly seem to be apple and pear, but there’s other fruit that I’m not so sure about: they might be damson and quince but I don’t think I’ve ever seen either in real life, so I could be wrong—not a lot of quince trees where I grew up. There are a few walnut and cobnut trees in there too, but more than anything, the hall looks like an orchard in full fruit.

Except what you don’t usually see in an orchard are dozens of sofas and chaises longues. Under every tree there are little clusters of them, all covered in faded velvet in soft, rich colours: russet, gold, forest green. They all look old and a bit shabby, but somehow that doesn’t detract from the beauty of the scene at all; it just adds to a sense of comfort and ease. I’ve got to say, whoever did the decorating has achieved the impossible—they’ve made a cavernous, stone hall look cosy and welcoming and so invitingly comfortable, it’s hard to imagine there isn’t some kind of enchantment going on. But when I ask Nightingale, he assures me this isn’t the case.

The walls are covered with a series of tapestries, mostly depicting scenes of harvesting and apple picking and so on. The exception is a pair of massive tapestries hung from adjacent pillars on one of the long walls. It’s possible they’re embroideries, not tapestries—I’m not really sure what the difference is; but whatever they are, they’re really massive—at least ten metres high, and both are mounted in huge, rectangular oak frames. Both tapestries depict beautiful, naked women. The woman on the left is heavily pregnant and is being supported by a naked man—the imminent father, I assume. You might argue that the tapestry leaves little to the imagination—until you see the other one, where a different woman is also hugely pregnant, and this time she’s actually squatting and giving birth. Both women are surrounded by fruit and vines and hops and blackberry brambles, as well as all kinds of birds and small mammals. 

The women both have long, auburn hair wreathed around their bodies, and soft, pale features. I don’t know a huge amount about art, but I do know a little bit about the Pre-Raphaelites. In fact, by coincidence, the Guildhall Gallery has a very nice collection of Victorian paintings which I’ve looked at a couple of times—though it’s the architecture of the Guildhall itself, and the fact that there’s a fucking Roman amphitheatre in the gallery basement, that’s the real pull of the place for me. The other reason I know about the Pre-Raphaelites is that I’m interested in the history of design, and that means I know a bit about William Morris and his mates. I can see that these tapestries or embroideries or whatever they are, are incredible examples of the classic, Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic: all glowing jewel colours and dreamy-looking beauties, with every inch of the canvases filled with nature. 

Nightingale leans closer so I can hear him over the hum of conversation around us.

“Beautiful, aren’t they? Fecundity, personified.”

“They’re amazing. Pre-Raphaelite?”

He looks pleased that I know. “Yes. They were designed by Edward Burne-Jones and made by May Morris and other women working at Morris and Co. When they were made they were considered far too scandalous to be exhibited to the general public, of course. Not that they were ever intended for that purpose.”

“Are you serious? They’re Burne-Jones? Morris and Co.? That’s incredible! How have they ended up here? I mean, I know they’re not usually in the Guildhall.”

“I believe they’re in the care of the Worshipful Company of Fruiterers; they’re kept in storage most of the year, along with the seating and trees and so on.”

I think that’s my mind blown for the evening, but Nightingale’s barely started. 

“You probably aren’t aware, Peter, but Burne-Jones was a member of the Folly. As was Morris; William, that is, not his daughter, May—no admission for women, of course.” He looks thoughtful. “Though there were always rumours that Morris and Burne-Jones taught May in secret. She had a lady companion—I can’t remember her name—and the rumour was that they were both skilled practitioners. I don’t know how true that was. In any case, Burne-Jones and May were commissioned to produce these two works by the Fruiterers back in the early 1890s, I think, along with several of the other works here.”

I don’t even know where to start. “You’re telling me the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were Newtonian practitioners?”

He frowns. “Not Rossetti, obviously. Far too unpredictable and indiscrete.”

I don’t let my complete ignorance on the subject stop me from agreeing with Nightingale’s damning indictment of Rossetti’s character. “Obviously, not Rossetti.” 

Nightingale knows I haven’t got a clue, and I get a little smile from him that makes me more pleased than it’s got any right to.

We stroll round the hall, stopping to chat with people every now and then; but mostly we just stroll and take in the sights, with me feeling dazed and almost drugged by the beauty surrounding me. Every surface, every stone column and ledge and carved figure, is wreathed with garlands of apples and pears and the things I think might be quinces. The fruit are strung together on great ropes made of plaited wheat stalks and hop vines. And the hall is lit with hundreds, maybe thousands, of candles. The police officer in me had a bit of a fire safety moment when I first saw it, but as we’ve wandered round, I’ve spotted at least a couple of Rivers, and I’m sure they could find a way to douse the flames if it ever came to that. The candlelight gives the whole place a soft, golden glow, and the hall smells of apples and beeswax. It’s like everything about the décor has been designed to lift the spirits. Honestly, I can’t stop beaming, and not all of that can be put down to the fact that Nightingale’s walking so close to me that his shoulder keeps brushing against mine, surely?

And it isn’t just the building and how it’s been decorated that’s cheering; it’s the people, too. As Nightingale predicted, everyone is in their finery. Many are dressed in velvet or silk, and unlike a more, shall we say, _mainstream_ evening event, almost no one is dressed completely in black—which might make you think you’d get a migraine just walking into the place, but it’s not like that at all. The colours people have chosen are either deep and understated (the option Nightingale went for, obviously), or they look like they were dyed using flowers and mosses and the like, so the colours are soft and natural-looking and have faded a little with age. In fact, a bit like the sofas, a lot of what people are wearing is old and a little threadbare. There are some genuinely antique-looking velvet frock coats and embroidered waistcoats and silk gowns—I suppose some of the people here are old enough to have bought them new in the 1800s and have been wearing them at celebrations like this ever since. Maybe other people have had their outfits handed down through generations of their family. There’s probably been a few visits to vintage shops in the last couple of weeks, too. In fact, when we first walked in, I was a bit worried that me and Nightingale might be the only people here in posh, new stuff, but that’s not quite the case; I’ve definitely seen a few very new, very classy gowns, and some high-end dinner jackets, in amongst the older stuff the majority are wearing. Anyway, the bottom line is—I don’t think Nightingale’s capable of turning up to an event like this in anything less formal or less perfect than what he’s wearing. And, if he ever was tempted to leave the Folly wearing anything even slightly faded or frayed, I think Molly would make it terrifyingly clear that that wasn’t going to happen on her watch.

Not that I’m complaining—have I mentioned how fantastic he looks? Lots of men never really grow into smart clothes; they never quite shake off the air of being a little boy who’s been made to wear his Sunday best. Or worse, they look shifty in a way that suggests an imminent court appearance that’s likely to result in a twelve to eighteen-month opportunity to enjoy Her Majesty’s hospitality. Nightingale looks neither infantile nor guilty; he just looks suave and handsome and . . . and I _seriously_ need to get my attention back to High Harvest. Luckily, Nightingale starts to steer us towards the far end of the hall. 

“Come on, Peter. Let’s pay our respects to the guest of honour.” He nods to a low dais set up right at the far end. “Every year, the London demi-monde welcomes the Orchards of Kent to their High Harvest celebration, to thank them for the produce of their county—historically, Kent was considered the larder of the city. Let’s go and say hello to some Orchards.”

“Orchards of Kent?” He can’t just mean the trees in tubs that are all over the place.

“Yes. The old orchards of Kent have genius loci. Some individual trees and small woods have dryads—tree nymphs—but the situation is rather different in very old orchards: there tends to be a god or goddess of each orchard.”

“Like the Rivers?”

“Yes, but their culture and customs are somewhat different. They don’t see territory in the same way, for example; I think because cross-pollination and fertilisation and those sorts of things are so important to them, they like to mix a lot amongst themselves—they’re very sociable. They visit each others’ orchards for weeks on end; and the different fruits get on well with each other, too.”

This is a lot of new information to get my head round. I’ve got a lot of questions, but I start with the most immediate. “You said _guest of honour_ , singular?”

“Everyone calls her Ma Russet these days; though a very long time ago she was known as Pomona. Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

When we get to the dais it’s immediately obvious who we’ve come to see. Near the front of the platform, a tiny, ancient-looking white woman is seated in a wheelchair; she’s holding a glass of what looks like cider in her hand, and she’s chatting to an old man who’s perched on a little wooden stool at her side. The wheelchair isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen before: it’s made completely of ornately carved wood, with wheels that look like ones off an old cart, and it’s covered in carvings of what I assume is apple blossom. The woman’s face is wrinkled but her cheeks are rosy, and she looks like she’s a hundred, if she’s a day.

When she spots Nightingale, her face lights up with what looks like genuine pleasure. She nudges her companion. “Look, Pippin, it’s our lovely Nightingale come to visit.”

“So it is, Ma.” Pippin smiles a broad, toothless smile at Nightingale.

To my surprise, Nightingale drops down onto one knee to talk to Ma Russet. I don’t know if it’s just so he’s not towering over her, or if it’s some ritualised part of paying our respects. She holds out a tiny, wrinkled hand for him to take. 

“Ma Russet, may I present my apprentice, Constable Peter Grant? Peter, this is Ma Russet, the most venerated of the ancient Orchards of Kent.” I kneel next to him and she holds out her other hand to me. It’s brown from the sun and speckled with age spots; it’s also, as she takes hold of my hand, surprisingly strong. 

I sense that a bit of formality is the order of the day. “It’s an honour to meet you, Ma’am.” You can’t grow up surrounded by Sierra Leonean women like my mum and aunties without learning how to show some proper respect; not if you value your life.

She chuckles, delightedly. “Handsome, _and_ polite! What a lovely boy. Your mother raised you properly, young Peter!” She makes no comment about my dad, which is probably just as well.

She squeezes my hand. “I’ve always had a soft spot for you Sons of Newton.” She sighs and for a moment she looks like she’s lost in memories. “Such a clever young man, he was!” She beams at me. “You know it was one of my apples—the Flower of Kent—that inspired him, don’t you?”

She seems to be implying she actually knew Newton. I’ve got a hundred questions forming in my head but I don’t get a chance to ask any of them because she nods at Nightingale and says, “This one’s ever so good-looking too, of course, _and_ as polite as you might ever wish. He’s been too much alone, though. And him being so very handsome—such a waste!” She cackles, clearly pleased with herself.

I glance at Nightingale. He has the look of someone who would rather be talking about literally anything other than the current topic of conversation but is too well-mannered to do anything as rude as interrupt or change the subject. 

And Ma Russet isn’t done with him yet. “I always tell him, but he takes no notice”—I feel, more than see, Nightingale wince— “it’s been far too long—he needs to rest, to sleep under the apple boughs with someone, to feel the support of the great earth beneath him; he needs to take time to watch the fruits of the land ripen—”

I’m not at all convinced she isn’t working up to something about him sewing his seed but sadly I’ll never know because Nightingale has evidently reached the limits of even his politeness and he stops her.

“Thank you, Ma; as ever, I’m grateful for your wisdom. However, Peter is my apprentice, so perhaps a change of subject?”

She squeezes my hand and winks at me, her pip-dark eyes twinkling. “You city boys work too hard. There’s a lot you could learn from us Orchards, you know, for all your clever book learning. We have the good sense to follow the seasons; we celebrate when the sap starts to rise; we bask in the Sun and sleep under the gentle Lady Moon; we quench our thirst in the rain. We mix and mingle and take pleasure in each other. Life shouldn’t only be duty, not even for our lovely Nightingale—no matter what he thinks. So don’t you go picking up the same silly ideas, young man.”

“No, Ma’am.”

She beckons me close, so I lean in, and she whispers in my ear:

“You take care of our Nightingale, young Peter. Even big, strong apple trees get lonely if they’re not in an orchard.”

“I’ll do my best, Ma’am.”

She pats my cheek and smiles. “Good boy.” And with that, she lets us go. 

Nightingale practically drags me to the table full of glasses and decanters. He rubs his hand over his face, as if attempting to wipe away the spots of colour in his cheeks. “My God, I need a drink.”

He pours two glasses of something bubbly and hands one to me. I have a mouthful and it's delicious: sweet and sharp at the same time—rhubarb, maybe? He downs half his glass in one go. He's already told me he'll drive us back at the end of the night, so I know he'll only have one drink, but I suspect he may be regretting that decision right now.

He shakes his head. “She’s completely incorrigible.”

“I liked her.”

He rolls his eyes at me. “That’s because you got off lightly. She obviously took a shine to you.”

I give him a cheeky smile. “What can I say? She’s got good taste.”

He looks steadily at me. “I don’t necessarily disagree.” 

Only the dry look that accompanies this pronouncement saves me from choking on my rhubarb champagne.

* * *

Half an hour later, Nightingale is deep in conversation with a family—mother, father and two adult sons—whose ancestors have been travelling round Europe for centuries, picking hops and orchard fruit. It’s a year since they’ve been in London and Nightingale is enquiring after the health of literally dozens of nieces and nephews and cousins, each one by name. It’s both impressive and dull, and I don’t realise my attention’s wandered until Nightingale gives me a gentle shove with his elbow and tells me to _feel free to go and do some community liaison work_. I don’t need telling twice. 

I grab another glass of the fruity champagne and do some networking . . . and by networking, I mean standing in a corner on my own, geeking out over the incredible roof, which was faithfully rebuilt by Giles Gilbert Scott in the early 1950s, after the previous one had been destroyed in the Blitz. I’m a London boy _and_ an architecture nerd, so of course I love the Guildhall. It’s the only surviving non-Christian medieval building in the City of London: the current building dates from 1411. I’m always amazed it’s survived everything London’s been through in the last six hundred years. Also, the fact that the Great Hall is twenty-seven metres high is incredible. Think about it: think about what it must have taken in the early 1400s—the human effort, the genius, the planning, the risks—to build a stone hall twenty-seven metres high. 

I’m so captivated by the sight of the roof soaring up from where it rests on top of the Kentish Ragstone walls that I nearly drop my glass when Beverley Brook sneaks up on me from behind. 

“Let’s have a look at you then, Peter.”

I turn towards her and she inspects me.

“Not bad.” She pats the soft sleeve of my jacket. “ _Jesus_ , Peter, that velvet’s made of silk!”

“It’s not bespoke, though!” I blurt out, because that’s the kind of loser I am.

She grins at me. “Well that’s not very Folly, is it?”

I grin back. She looks—I’m thinking the word is ravishing—in a long gown the colour of aubergines. She catches the look of admiration on my face and nods as if to say _of course I look fantastic, duh_. But what she actually says is “Don’t get any ideas, Folly Boy: I’m focussed on my degree, my career, right now. Anyway, you may be pretty, but you're the Nightingale’s Starling, and you won’t catch me getting tangled up with none of that.”

I try arguing, just for the sake of it, really. “All I am is a police officer, Bev; a very junior police officer.” I can’t even go near the whole _Nightingale’s Starling_ thing. I mean; what the fuck is that?

She gives me an old fashioned look. “I wasn’t pulled out of the river yesterday, you know, Peter! For one, there’s no such thing as _just_ a police officer—you know that; and for two—you’re wearing a tux that set _someone_ back a couple of grand, despite the lack of bespoke tailoring, so your days of playing the _I’m just an ordinary guy_ card are over, I’d say.”

I must look a bit crestfallen, because she slips her arm through mine and turns us so we can people watch. She points out various members of the demi-monde, but she doesn’t give me a scrap of gossip; she’s clearly the type of river goddess who thinks that other people’s stories are for them to tell, not her. It occurs to me that that would be a great quality to have in a friend, _if_ she’d consider friendship with a _Folly Boy_ like me. 

It also occurs to me that although Beverley Brook looks amazing and I really do fancy her, my mind keeps wandering back to Nightingale. Even with her standing so close to me that her locks, which are twisted up in an elegant pile on top of her head, brush against me as she’s talking; even so, my mind wanders back to Nightingale, wondering where he is; what he’s up to. Right on cue we spot him through the crowd, on the opposite side of the hall, looking like some sort of pre-war film star. The family he was talking to have evidently moved on to chat with someone else, and he’s now deep in conversation with an old, black guy who’s sporting a beard so bushy and unkempt, my mind offers me _Ghanaian Captain Birdseye_. 

Beverley leans in close to me. “The Nightingale’s looking very attractive tonight, don’t you think?”

I just have time to mutter “I guess” before the man himself glances in our direction and tilts his head a fraction—a silent summons.

Beverley laughs. “Go on then, your _Master_ beckons.”

“That’s not a term I’m comfortable with, as you can well imagine.”

She shrugs. “Tell me about it. But it’s the Folly way, innit?”

“Well, it’s not my way.” 

She looks at me, appraisingly, and nods. Then she looks back across at Nightingale, who is now standing alone, leaning oh-so-coolly against a stone pillar, clearly waiting for me. “Well, whatever you want to call him, you’d better not keep him waiting.” And with that she giggles and gives me a shove in Nightingale’s direction.

* * *

All in all, it’s a pretty great evening. Architects bang on about how the built environment and our surroundings in general can have a major impact on how people feel and behave and relate to one another. And, as it turns out, if you put a few hundred members of London’s demi-monde and assorted country cousins in a spectacular ancient hall, and you fill that hall with warmth and candlelight and the beauty of nature, what you get after a few hours are little groups of people sitting and lying on sofas, leaning against each other, arms round each other, some quietly talking, others just sitting in companionable silence. Oh, and I swear to God, people are actually feeding each other figs and cake and sweets . . . and there’s smiling . . . _so_ much smiling. It’s a lovely sight—large groups of people peacefully enjoying each other’s company makes this particular police officer’s heart swell with contentment.

All this being sociable and making small talk is knackering though, so finally, Nightingale and me sit down—sink down, really—into an old, comfy sofa. He’s sitting in one corner with his legs stretched out in front of him but crossed at the ankles in an elegant fashion, and an arm draped along the back of the sofa: a living, breathing dictionary definition of words like urbane and debonair. I’m sitting in the other corner of the sofa and I realise I’ve mimicked his posture without meaning too. I shift a bit so we don’t look like the world’s poshest pair of bookends. We chat intermittently, but mostly we just watch the magical folk of London and their guests celebrate High Harvest. Nightingale looks relaxed and content with his lot, and I have to say, I feel pretty much the same. I also feel just a little bit sleepy, which I think is down to the amount of champagne I’ve put away, so I close my eyes for a minute.

I don’t think I was actually asleep but maybe I was drifting a little, because it’s a bit of a shock when someone prods my shoulder. I open my eyes to look up into the lined, smiling face of Perry, one of the older Orchards. He’s standing in front of me, leaning on a beautifully carved walking stick, which I assume is what he prodded me with. His wife, who has ivy woven through her tangle of grey curls and is wearing a slightly worn, long silk dress the pale, soft green of a ripe pear, is standing next to him.

“Move over a bit, young apprentice, give these old bones a bit of space to rest.” He indicates with a wave of his stick that I should shift up next to Nightingale. It’s not a huge sofa, and I move along as far as I can without it actually looking like I’m going to climb into Nightingale’s lap. His wife, who’s name I never actually find out, lowers herself onto the end of the sofa and then her husband drops down between her and me. He pretty much lands on my knee and then wriggles down, forcing me to move along some more until I’m pressed up against Nightingale. Once he’s comfortable, Perry sighs, contentedly, and he and his wife start gossiping with each other about various people in the hall. At any other time, their chatter would have definitely held my attention . . . it’s just that their arrival has left me and Nightingale squashed up together, his arm trailing behind me along the back of the sofa. We look like a couple of teenagers at the cinema, playing that timeless game of has he/hasn’t he got his arm round his date.

Nightingale shows no sign of being uncomfortable. In fact, I can see out of the corner of my eye that he’s dropped his head back so that it’s resting against the back of the sofa. His eyes are closed. Needless to say, none of my Metropolitan Police training has prepared me for this situation and the feelings it’s evoking in me. Somewhat reluctantly, I go with the obvious. “Do you need a bit more space, sir? Do you want me to move?”

He doesn’t answer and I’m not sure he’s heard me, so I ask again. “Do you want me to move?”

I feel him breathe in and breathe out. “Not particularly.”

 _Oh_.

“But what about you, Peter? Do you want to move?” As he says it, he lays his hand on my shoulder, but so lightly I can barely feel it: he’s making it easy for me to move away if I that’s what I want. I go with my next point of concern.

“Half of London can see us, sir.”

“I am aware.”

“How do you think they’re going to react?”

He actually chuckles. “I have no idea. How do they seem to be coping so far?” He’s still got his eyes firmly shut.

I look around me. Most people don’t appear to be paying any attention. One of the younger Rivers gives me a little wave as she wanders past, but that’s about it.

“They seem to be surviving.”

“I’m happy to hear it. But you didn’t answer my question: What about you, Peter? You can move if you want to—just say the word.”

As I open my mouth to reply, I have the sensation of stepping off the edge of a cliff—but in a good way, if you know what I mean. “I’m happy where I am, sir.”

“Is that so?” He sounds happy, and relieved.

“Yes, sir; it is.”

“Perhaps you might call me Thomas, then?”

“I’ll try, but it’s going to take some getting used to, _Thomas_.” The word feels strange in my mouth.

He squeezes my shoulder and sighs, “I suppose we both have some significant adjusting to do,” and I realise I have literally no idea how long ago Nightingale might have last done something like this. It’s possible it could have been decades, so yeah, he probably wins the _this might take a bit of getting used to_ competition.

So we sit, him with his arm draped round my shoulders; me, slouched down on the sofa so I can lean my head against him . . . and meanwhile, the world keeps turning, and no one dies of shock—not even me. 

After a while I hear Perry say to his wife, “Shall we have a song, my love? What say you?” By way of an answer she starts singing some kind of old folk song about stout young men bringing in the harvest. Her voice is a little wavery, but sweet, all the same. As she starts the second verse, a few people sitting nearby join in, with some of the women’s voices rising up above the main tune to harmonise, while the men provide a solid foundation beneath them. By the time the song finishes, half the people in the hall are singing and most of the rest have stopped talking and are listening, contentedly. When that song ends, one of the Orchards sitting with Ma Russet says, “What about _An apple for my love_?” and he starts the song off. 

And that’s pretty much it for the next hour. Around us, the Orchards and the people of the demi-monde sing old songs, love songs, songs of hard work and of harvests safely gathered in. It probably goes without saying that traditional English folk is not usually the music of choice for this young, mixed-race Londoner, but you’d have to have a harder heart than mine not to be moved by the sound of a room full of people singing together not as a performance, but just for the sheer joy of it. Of course, I am basically being cuddled by Nightingale, so not everything that’s happening to my heart is down to the music, but the point still stands.

I notice that a couple of teenagers on a nearby sofa have started to kiss pretty enthusiastically. I whisper in Nightingale’s ear, “I don’t think I could kiss you here, in front of everyone.”

He leans away from me so he can see my face clearly. “But you do want to kiss me?”

“Yeah, I really do.”

I watch him trying to get some control over the smile that ambushes his face but he pretty much fails, and if I’d known it was this easy to make him look so bloody happy, I might have told him I wanted to kiss him a long time ago. I mean, it’s not like it wasn’t true a long time ago.

Suddenly, he starts manoeuvring us up off the sofa. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?” Not that I really care that much, as long as it’s somewhere less public.

He steers us towards the exit. “Well, you may not be aware, but the Guildhall has some very beautiful crypts with some architectural features you might find interesting.”

“Architectural features? Are you kidding me? You want me to come down to the crypts and view the architectural features? Is this your equivalent of an invitation to come up and see your etchings?!”

He looks at me and sighs, theatrically. “Lord help me; is this what it’s going to be like?”

I grin at him and shrug, because, _yeah_ , knowing me, it’s probably going to be exactly like this. The next thing I know, though, he’s pulling me behind a pillar and pressing me against it with the whole weight of his body. He slides one hand round the back of my neck and the other settles at my waist, and I wrap my arms around him and pull him close. He presses his cheek against my cheek and then softly rubs the tip of his nose up and down against the side of mine and it feels like he’s breathing me in, and my heart’s racing and I can’t wait, I just can’t wait any longer—I find his mouth with my mouth and he lets out this sound, this low, animal growl, the most wild, unguarded, un-Nightingale sound imaginable, and it shoots adrenaline through me like fireworks are going off in my chest.

And then he kisses me and I think I want it hot and frenzied but he gives it to me soft and slow, and it’s _so_ good, so fucking good, I think I might actually melt or pass out. Seriously; he eases the tip of his tongue between my lips and then he traces the inner edges of them, slowly, and it’s almost hypnotic—and it feels so fucking incredible I’m literally lightheaded with it.

I’m starting to get hard and I pull him against me, but he resists. He stops kissing me, which is a tragedy, and he takes a step back. He’s flushed and breathing quite hard and the expression on his face basically says _I want to devour you_ . . . which is fucking electrifying. 

“I want to, Peter; please believe me when I say I want to more than anything—but you know we can’t; not here.”

I suppose he’s got a point. It’s one thing him having his arm round me in public; it’s quite another, me having my hand down his trousers—which is exactly what would have happened if we’d carried on much longer. I look around; we’re leaning against a pillar at one end of a corridor that leads away from the Great Hall—it’s in no way private and it really is just a matter of time before someone walks past.

“This isn’t the crypt, Thomas. I was promised architectural features.”

“No, well, if you remember, I had an urgent need to stop you talking.” He looks at me with so much affection it really makes me want to kiss him again, but there are voices further up the corridor, so that's not going to happen. He glances in the direction of the voices and takes another step away from me. "These are the options as I see them. We can either go back into the hall and be sociable for another couple of hours, _or_ ,”—his voice drops to a low purr—“I could take you home."

Obviously, it's the easiest decision I've ever made. I take hold of one of his hands and we both watch as I lace our fingers together. "Thomas." I'm already getting used to saying his name.

"Yes?" Suddenly, he looks young and hesitant; like he's actually unsure; like he thinks it's actually possible I might choose singing folk songs with the demi-monde over kissing him and holding him and spending the night in his bed.

"Thomas,"—I start pulling him towards the exit. "Let's go home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes about various aspects of this last chapter:
> 
> 1\. The London Guildhall truly is a wonderful place, and it does indeed have some good Pre-Raphaelite art in the gallery and a Roman amphitheatre in the [basement](http://www.guildhall.cityoflondon.gov.uk/)  
> And yes, the crypts are particularly [beautiful](http://www.guildhall.cityoflondon.gov.uk/east-west-crypts)
> 
> 2\. The last chapter of this fic was in part inspired by this wonderful exhibition of Edward Burne-Jones’ [work](https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/edward-burne-jones?gclid=EAIaIQobChMImtv0kc7N3wIVTeJ3Ch3ZygvvEAAYASAAEgKhEfD_BwE)
> 
> 3\. May Morris, fantastic artist and needlewoman, did indeed have a “lady companion” in later [life](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/sep/29/family-tree-the-exquisite-brilliance-of-william-morriss-daughter)
> 
> 4\. Worshipful Company of Fruiterers. This is a real thing! It’s one of the London Livery Companies and has been in existence for over seven hundred [years](https://www.fruiterers.org.uk/our-history/)
> 
> 5\. Pomona was a goddess of fruitful abundance in ancient Roman religion and myth. Her name comes from the Latin word pomum, "fruit," specifically orchard fruit. Apparently, she loved the fields, and branches loaded with ripe apples. There is the most gorgeous tapestry of her in the Burne-Jones [exhibition](https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O18150/pomona-tapestry-panel-burne-jones-edward/), though it usually lives at the V & A.
> 
> 6\. According to historical sources, it seems at least possible that Newton was inspired by the rare Flower of Kent [apple](https://www.york.ac.uk/physics/about/newtonsappletree/)

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from The Song of Solomon: _Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love. His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me._
> 
> I take that _for I am sick of love_ to mean _for I am sick with love_. You'll see.


End file.
